The Talons Of Doctor Woo
by Jack Wooster
Summary: An Eleventh Doctor Story with elements of Dennis Potter's The Singing Detective, the TV show, not the film, from a skeptical viewpoint.
1. Chapter 1

The Talons Of Dr Woo

Chapter One

He awoke in a bed with crisp white sheets. Waking was slow and he only gradually became aware of his surroundings, it was light and there were other people in the room, moving about not paying attention to him. Why wasn't he in his own bed? He tried to move just a little and was rewarded with a sharp pain in his left leg, ouch, not trying that again in a hurry. He tried very gently to move other parts of his body, right leg seemed alright, arms O.K., something up with his ribs though, and the left side of his head felt tender. Touching it intensified a headache he realised he had had all along. It was hard to take in his surroundings without sitting up or moving his head too much and changing the focus of his vision seemed to take far more effort than it should have. The people moving about near him seemed to be dressed in white and there was a faint smell of disinfectant in the air, he must be in a hospital, oh dear, what had happened, he didn't seem to remember anything too clearly.

A feeling of thirst arose and refused to go away, his throat began to feel drier and drier. He looked around, next to the bed was a covered jug of water and a glass, moving slowly using his hands to lift his body he pulled himself into an upright position and poured a drink. Out of the babble of voices around him he picked out one, a woman's voice, saying, "It looks as if our time traveller is awake."

He closed his eyes for a moment, it seemed easier to shut them and just let his mind drift. His imagination carried him between the stars, through swirling nebula and around red dwarfs. After some time, he had no idea how long he sensed someone near by and opened his eyes again. A young female face was gazing down at him. "Hello, how are you feeling?" The nurse asked sympathetically.

"Woozy, are you one of the Sisters of the Infinite Schism?"

"No, I don't think I am, Sister is over in the office. I'll see if Dr. Ross is still in, he may want to see you again, now you are more awake." She turned to go.

"Nurse."

"Yes."

"What year is it?"

"It's 2011, the same as last time you asked. I'll see if Dr. Ross is free."

An indeterminable passage of time later he had another visitor. A short, bearded man in his forties, wearing a grey suit rather than a white coat, attended by the same nurse. The man picked up the notes from the bottom of the bed, and addressed the nurse, "Is he lucid?" He had a soft Scottish voice, pleasant but he had a beard, slightly too bushy around the mouth, almost like a cat who had got a bird, and for some reason bearded men were not to be trusted.

"He still seems confused Doctor, he asked me what year it was again."

The doctor turned to the patient, "Good evening, I'm Dr. Ross, and you seem to be a man of mystery Mr. ?"

A name, they wanted a name, trouble was he couldn't think of one. That wasn't right, was it? Not only couldn't he remember how he got here, he couldn't remember his name. Not good.

His hesitation in replying seemed to make the nurse uncomfortable, "Doctor." She began to break the silence.

"Yes." Said Dr. Ross.

"Yes." Said his patient at the same time.

"Sorry." The nurse said to him, "I was talking to the Doctor."

"That's it. The Doctor, I'm known as the Doctor."

"Doctor is a title, rather than a name." Interjected Dr. Ross, "As in, Doctor, Ross."

"Just, The Doctor in my case."

"You've been in some kind of accident." Said Dr. Ross. "Do you remember anything about what happened to you?"

"No." He replied, "But I'm finding it hard to remember anything clearly." He looked hard at Dr. Ross, "You've drugged me haven't you?"

"A mild sedative, you were quite disturbed when they brought you in here. We'll reduce the dose and see if that helps things become any clearer."

We'll do more than, reduce, the dose, he thought to himself.

"O.K., we'll have another little chat tomorrow after a good nights sleep." He turned to the nurse keep up the Risperdal and Paxipam down to 20mg." Then he left.

Later the drugs trolley came around accompanied by two nurses, when they reached him they poured him a glass of water and passed him a little plastic pot with two yellow tablets in it one round and one lozenge shaped. The nurse with the trolley, a harsh looking middle aged woman, saw him looking at them, "They'll help you sleep." She said not totally convincingly. He popped them into his mouth and took a swig from the glass. When the trolley moved on he popped them out of his mouth again and into his pajama pocket.

The next morning the Doctor was sat it Ross's office. Earlier, after he had palmed more medication, an orderly had turned up with a wheel chair, he insisted he could walk, at least with the help of a stick, but apparently hospital policy dictated it had to be the chair, as he was pushed along he noticed some of the doors were locked, the orderly had used a swipe card to open them. He was now positioned facing the desk, but Dr. Ross, dressed in his grey suit, with a grey tie. was on his feet, pacing the room.

"You're looking a lot better, tell me has anything else come back to you?"

The Doctor, conscious he was wearing pajamas and a dressing gown which were not his own, ran a hand through his hair so that at least looked tidy. "Feeling much better, thank you for asking."

"Do you recall a name, perhaps or where you live?"

"I told you, I am known as the Doctor. Maybe you already known a bit more about me than you are letting on"

"I assure you we know very little about you. You were transferred here from A&E at Queen Elizabeth's when it was clear you were somewhat confused. You had no wallet or phone or other identification on you."

"And yet when I woke up, I heard one of the nurses say 'Our time traveller is awake'"

"Did you?, I'm sorry, they are not supposed to talk about patients like that."

"But she did, and I heard her. It's a strange thing to say if you know nothing about me, how could she know?"

"How could she know what, are you claiming to actually be a time traveller?"

"I didn't originate the claim did I?"

Ross sighed. "All right, look you have no name, that we could find, and when you were admitted you were wearing somewhat unusual clothes. I have them here." He picked up a folded tweed jacket, shirt, trousers and red braces from a side desk. "We thought maybe you had been in fancy dress do you recognise them as yours?"

"Definitely."

"Well we searched the pockets and this is all we came up with."

"A key, and some money. Nothing so odd about that I should say."

"Count the money."

The Doctor took it and the key, his TARDIS key. "Four shillings and sixpence, oh and a half penny."

"Not a very useful amount of money."

"Isn't it? I don't know maybe I can get a bag of chips or two on the way home. How much are chips in 2011?"

"You won't find many chip shops taking shillings."

"Won't I? Inflation, the misers curse, erodes your savings whilst your back is turned?"

Ross tried to get back to the point. "So when a man with no identity, was found with old money in his pockets and who kept asking what year it was, the nurses nicknamed him the time traveller."

"Obviously without expecting him to actually be a time traveller."

"Obviously. You don't remember your accident, you don't seem to remember your name, but I think you are too intelligent, too aware not to know you do need some help, that these things need remembering."

The Doctor paused, there were some things he seemed to have forgotten but he was not quite an amnesiac basket case. "Something is wrong here, certainly. Whatever sort of scrape I got into I do not know what it is, but I do know who and what I am."

"A time traveller?"

"A Time Lord, the last of the Time Lords, from Gallifrey in The constellation of Kasterborous."

"Could not an alternative theory explain the facts more easily?"

"Such as I am a numismatist, with an interesting wardrobe that got a bump on the head?"

"A numismatist?"

"A collector of old coins. From your point of view I can see it would sound more likely."

"Tell me about the time travel then, where do you remember being?"

"A million places, I remember marching down the Menin Road, blistering heat with sticky mud sucking at my boots, feet aching and blistered. I remember sitting in a dinner in Utah in 1965, eating bacon and maple syrup, Tainted Love playing on the radio."

"These experiences could be had today."

"Why walk down the Menin road in 2011, when you could get the bus? Clambering through the ruins of a blasted Washington, the hum of mutated insects heavy in the air, someone has found a record player and wired it up to a portable generator, their listening to the Inkspots, 'I don't want to the world on fire.'"

"It is possible that following your unknown trauma, your brain is taking in clues from outside, being referred to as a time traveller, hearing people being called 'Doctor', and it has constructed an identity around these clues until your actual memories return."

"Until I'm in my right mind again."

"Until you are feeling better, yes."

"It would be more probable, but it isn't the case, this once. Maybe, from your point of view, I'm a real doctor."

"Surgeons often wear bow ties, but you look rather young to be a surgeon."

"Well I'm older than I look, and I know that the hip bone is connected to the thigh bone, and the thigh bone is connected to the knee bone, and the knee bone is connected to the leg bone." The Doctor sang, "And leg bone is connected to the ankle bone, and the ankle bone is connected to the foot bone and the foot bone is connected to the toe bone. Now hear the word of the Lord". He finished on a crescendo and looked at the rather surprised face of Dr. Ross in front of him, "No, I'm not that sort of doctor. Although I can be sure my hip bone is not connected to my leg bone at the moment, not in the precise way it should be, anyway."

"And although you remember being a lord you do not remember how you sustained your injuries?"

"A Time Lord. Look you're a medical doctor aren't you. Besides being a psychiatrist I mean."

"Of course, all psychiatrists are medically qualified, otherwise we would be mere psychologists."

"Quite, then you should have a stethoscope handy, maybe only as a kind of badge of office, even if you rarely use it."

"In my draw."

"Right, two hearts, listen." The Doctor open his pajama top and bared his chest.

"You saying you have two hearts?"

"And two heart beats, listen."

Ross picked up the instrument and walked over to the Doctor. He then listened on both sides of his chest. "Sorry I can only hear one heart."

"Let me try." The Doctor listened, one heart beat. He was momentarily confused, had he had a single heart attack? Then he remembered something. "The stuff I was found with, was there a watch, an old fashioned fob watch, with spiral engravings on one side?"

Dr. Ross had clearly had enough. "Just the key and money I'm afraid, sorry, that's all for today, I'll see you again very soon.. " He trailed off not having a name to finish with.

"Doctor." Said the Doctor as if talking to an idiot child.

"See you soon, Doctor." said Dr. Ross with badly disguised ill-patience.

After being wheeled back, the Doctor sat in his bed contemplating how the interview had gone. He enjoyed being in peoples faces, but maybe that approach had not worked too well in this case. If this place was what it appeared to be an early twenty first century psychiatric hospital, then he had just convinced the authorities he was blisteringly insane, which may not get him out of here too quickly. Even without his sonic screwdriver, he was pretty sure he could easily get through the locked doors or get hold of a swipe card, but in his current condition the one thing he could not do was run, and some of the staff here, the larger ones, looked as if they were used to dealing with escaping patients. If this place was not what it appeared to be, and someone was playing an elaborate game with him then so far so good. Otherwise he may just have made things more difficult for himself.

Still he needed time to recover, maybe best to stay put. Funny if he had been more badly injured he could just have regenerated and been right as rain in no time, but sometimes you just had to take the slower route. He also could not think of anywhere to escape to, he had no idea where his TARDIS was. He's let this one play out a little longer until he knew what was going on.

A policeman visible as a flash of yellow in the drab ward was talking to one of the nurses at the door of their little office. After a couple of minutes the nurse pointed at the Doctor's bed and the policeman came over. He was a big lad and towered the recumbent Doctor, his top was bristling with pieces of equipment making him look like a luminous yellow Batman.

"Good morning Sir." He gestured towards a chair next to the bed. "May I?"

"Be my guest."

No longer looming over the bed, the policeman, as everyone else did, asked how he was feeling.

"Much better." The Doctor replied, honestly.

"The nurse tells me you are still having trouble remembering what happened to you."

"It still hasn't come back."

"And your name?"

"Still a little hazy on that one." Said the Doctor, diplomatically.

"That's a shame. There is probably not a great deal we can do today then. You see, between you and me, Sir, you may not remember much about how you ended up in here, but your injuries are consistent with an assault, the sort that normally would go with a robbery. That's why we became involved, when you were admitted to Queen Elizabeth's."

"So you think I was mugged?"

"Did you have a phone or a wallet on you when you arrived?"

"No, I did not." The Doctor didn't mention the only phone he owned he kept in a police telephone box and he didn't carry a wallet, only his psychic paper in a leather holder. Come to think of it, that was missing, along with his sonic screwdriver.

"Sorry, to be the bearer of bad tidings, there maybe a more innocent explanation, but our job is to investigate to see if there is a less pleasant answer, and if there is to see what we can do about it."

"Look, it's possible you are right, but I can't help you at the moment."

"If anything does come back to you, and in my experience it usually does, here's my card, give me a call." He passed the Doctor a police business card with Sergeant Perris written on it in Biro, and a list of police numbers on the back.

"Thank you officer, I'll give you a call if anything comes back to me."

Sergeant Perris rose from his chair. "Goodbye Sir, hope your feeling more yourself soon, keep taking the pills."

"I will." The Doctor lied. He had no doubt he had been attacked but could he have been mugged, it seemed a little pedestrian after the risks he had taken in the past? He, the Doctor, the bogeyman Sontarians told each other stories about around camp fires, the reason Daleks had trouble getting to sleep at night, robbed in an alley. How much heroin could you buy from the sale of a sonic screwdriver and some psychic paper. Mind you, he had once had to regenerate after falling and banging his head on the TARDIS console, so it didn't pay to get to above himself.

A couple of days later he was was back in Ross's office, this time he had walked there under his own steam, but still with an orderly to accompany him, and open the swipe-card doors. There was a laptop open on the desk facing away from him.

"Morning Doctor." Said the Doctor.

"Good morning to you Doctor." Said Dr. Ross

"Please let's not be so formal John will do."

"You have a name for me now?"

"John Smith, well Dr. John Smith, but John, or Mr. Smith will do just fine."

Ross paused, the Doctor wondered if this was going to work. He was going to prove his sanity by making up a sane sounding fictitious identity. 'John Smith' had worked before, a sort of double bluff, it sounded fake so it had to be real, besides he had met real John Smiths, there were loads of them.

"Do you recall anything else?"

"A little, living here in London, working for the U.N."

"For the U.N., that sounds a very important role."

It seemed he was being checked for self aggrandisement again. "No, nothing special just as a scientific adviser to their Intelligence Taskforce."

"You are a real qualified doctor then, you did remember that much?"

"A doctor of science, rather than medicine."

"And your doctorate is in?"

"Astrophysics." replied the Doctor without hesitation, thinking, 'go on ask me anything, I'm pretty sure I can bluff that one.'

"Your accent does seem local, but do I detect a very slight bit of a Gaelic twang now and again, from the Emerald Isle maybe?"

In the past, the Doctor thought, he had sported slightly Gaelic accents, slightly Irish or Scottish but not presently though. "Do you, I don't hear it."

"And Gallifrey in the constellation of, what was it, Castor-something?"

"Kasterborous, a figment of my fevered imagination, I'm afraid."

"You seem very sure of the name."

"The constellation of Kasterborous exists." Replied the Doctor, failing to mention that it could not be seen from Earth. "But Gallifrey does not." Sadly true enough.

"Well, I did a little ferreting around after our last little chat, and as ever Google was our friend. I couldn't find anything on Kasterborous, probably as I couldn't spell the name,but I did find Gallifrey." He swung round the lap top to show the Doctor. It was on Google maps, and showed a tiny village at the bottom of what looked like a mountain, elevation was hard to judge from the aerial photograph.

"Interesting, I must have heard the name somewhere, you said the mind picks things up to construct it's fictions."

"True, what sounds like madness may have method in't."

"Hamlet."

"Indeed, and who are we to argue with the Bard?"

"Such stuff as dreams are made of?"

"Quite, you maybe interested to know that I did some digging, Gallifrey as you can see is a hamlet itself, one larger house with a few supporting cottages, to the west of Galway. I checked the history of the house, it was until relatively recently in the hands of one family. It's last owner was a Mr. Lord, Timothy Lord, he died and his son a Timothy also, sold the house and moved to London."

"Ha, Hamlet, hamlet I see what you did there." Said the Doctor as if he had not heard the rest.

"'Tim Lord', the name means nothing to you? It might not be your name but someone close yo you."

This was getting out of hand, thought the Doctor. Someone was definitely trying to do his head in, was it Ross or was he a sincere dupe of some higher power? A torrent of what could be mistaken for self aggrandising delusion rose to his lips, but he held back deciding to continue playing along. "The last of the Tim Lords, assuming I have no children, nope, can't say that comes as an eureka moment."

"Well it could be a clue, think about it."

"I'll mull it over."

"And the John Smith stuff?"

"Yeah, sort of made it up. Sorry."

"I'll arrange for you to have access to the internet. Normally it's the last thing our patients need, it just helps them find fresh conspiracy theories, but if you do some research it may help."

The Doctor had to allow himself to be accompanied into a side office to gain internet access, through another swipe card door, but once in there and logged on to a guest account, he was left alone to his own devices. The rest of the hospital's intranet was fire-walled off from his location but it only took him a couple of minutes to find a back door and gain access. The whole system checked out, a large hospital IT network just as one would expect. If someone had set this thing up for his benefit they had gone to a lot of trouble. Patient's records and a vast database of emails and staff records where all there. The locked doors didn't seem to have any central control however, and could not be over ridden from a computer, he could setup a fake staff account for himself but he would still need an actual card to open anything.

The village of Gallifrey appeared as promised on maps of Ireland, slightly to the northwest of Galway. Looking at Street view, which covered this far flung area surprisingly well, he saw a landscape of low dry stone walls, stunted windswept trees, and uneven close cropped grass. The original cottages were tiny roofless ruins, but next to them were new modern single story homes. The larger house was intact, a stark, enigmatic, vaguely Gothic pile, that Rassilon himself might have felt at home in.

He next searched for Tim Lord, and found that there were a number of actual members of the House Of Lords with Tim, or Timothy, in their names and titles. When he refined his searches he found Tim Lord, previously of Gallifrey, had a small online presence. He was present on the electoral role and seemed to to be the owner of a house in Wimbledon. There was a business site selling antiques which must have been the page Ross had found, it was cleverly designed to appear near the top of any vaguely relevant search list. There was an eclectic range of goods on offer, furniture from many periods, wartime memorabilia, clocks, ornaments, weapons, all photographed and inviting reasonable offers. There was also an eBay account offering less valuable goods. Interestingly, thought the Doctor, it was the sort of operation a time traveler short of a bob or two might setup, but he didn't recall doing it.


	2. Chapter 2

The Talons Of Dr Woo

Chapter Two

Another day, another visit to Ross's office. The Doctor wondered what he would have to say to walk out of this hospital without a fight, he was feeling physically much better now, so if it came to it that was what he might have to do.

"Good morning"

"Morning"

"How are you doing, have you unearthed any of the memories trapped in that noggin of yours?"

"Look I'll level with you, I cannot remember being Tim Lord." He said.

"You researched Tim on the net?"

"I did, yes."

"And nothing came back to you, nothing seemed familiar?"

"There was a house in Ireland."

"In Gallifrey."

"In Gallifrey, yes"

"The name at least, was familiar to you then?"

"There appears to be a coincidence of names."

"Did you find out anything more?"

"Tim Lord according to the website is an antiques dealer, he lives in London, seems to buy and sell from his home. I have an address, but nothing on Google images, no pictures of him."

"So if you are Tim Lord that address could be where you live?"

"If I was, it could be."

"No memories though, nothing coming through, just research?"

"Just research."

"Right, how are you doing with the medication?"

The Doctor had been researching Risperdal and it's common side effects, on the net as well. "I've been feeling fidgety and not sleeping too well, but that maybe just being stuck in this place."

"O.k. I'd like you to continue with the medication. I'm sorry you still do not recall what happened to you, but I'm going to make a suggestion. If that address is your home, spending time in familiar surroundings may help your memory."

"You want me to go to Mr. Lord's house?"

"I'll arrange for someone to take you there. It may be the kick start you need to get your memories back in order."

"If he's at home it could be rather embarrassing."

"If I am wrong about this, you return here and we try another approach, until we succeed."

"So that's it I can leave?" If this was some kind of trap he was in, it was strange he was being thrown out of it.

"You do not seem to be a threat to yourself or others, and a slight limp is hardly a reason for a longer stay in hospital. I'll get one of the community nurses to take you over to this address and if all seems well, make yourself at home, and I'll see you again in a weeks time. The nurse will pop round daily at first, to check you are alright and check the medication is going well."

To check I'm taking it, thought the Doctor.

There was a long wait until Paul the community psychiatric nurse arrived. The Doctor dressed in his own clothes, and with four shillings, sixpence ha'penny to his name, lay on his bed. He managed to almost finish a detective novel set in forties London, but written in the seventies and missing a legitimate noir feel by a country mile. Paul introduced himself as a cpn and they set off together. It seemed strange traveling in someone else's company, letting them take the lead. A role reversal almost, with him as the companion. The autumnal air was cold and crisp, and seemed fresher as soon as they left hospital grounds in Paul's car. The Doctor kept the window down to avoid the smell of sweat, crisps and air freshener, that filled the vehicle. He wondered what he would do. Once they had found this Tim Lord chap and made their excuses, he would have to give Paul the slip. Then where to go? Sadly his old friend the Brigadier must be dead by this time, Sarah Jane should still be around, still doing what he did, on a smaller scale, but not for much longer he remembered with a sad shiver. This was why he tried to keep his distance from human relationships, they ended too often with death, however much you loved them, they always went and died, time it's self took them from you.

Still, keep buggering on, as another old friend of his used to say. He would have to create a TARDIS locator, as he still had no idea where he had left the old girl, which meant, first things first, he would have build a sonic screwdriver, again, which was fiddly enough as it was. Some of the components were quite hard to get hold of in this time period it wouldn't be easy.

Paul parked in the better off end of Wimbledon and they walked the short distance to where Tim Lord Lived. The small London town house was two stories high, with what looked like a separate basement flat underneath, it stood dwarfed by neighouring larger, adjoining properties on either side, it had a dark blue front door. The Doctor reached to ring the bell.

"Don't you have a key, Why not try it?" Paul said.

"I have one key, but I'm not sure it opens this door."

"Give it a try."

The Doctor took out the TARDIS key from his pocket and tried it in the lock with out much hope, the door opened, and they walked inside.

"It seems to belong to you, does it look familiar, do you know where the bathroom is?" Paul asked.

"Upstairs, first on the left."

"so you remember it then?"

"No, it's a house I have a way with houses."

"Do you think anyone lives here with you."

"I'm pretty certain no one lives with me, here."

"Hello, anyone home?" The nurse called out, There was no reply. "Shall we look around?"

They tried the first room on the right, a small front lounge, it had lounge furniture, but also filing cabinets, and fax machine, it looked as if it doubled as an office. At the end of the hall, beyond the stairs was a tiny kitchen, it smelt as it something had gone off in it.

Beyond that was another door, they went in. This back room was truly massive, quite out of scale with the rest of the small house, It had wood paneled walls against which were crowded numerous items of antique furniture covered in an extraordinary array objects. The room was square, but the arrangement of furniture gave it an almost circular feel, or maybe hexagonal, at the far end a spiral stair case led upwards. In the center was a circular table covered in computer equipment, fed by wires which descended from the ceiling. The Doctor looked around at the objects which surrounded him an antique chair, an ormolu clock, a hat stand, here he felt at home. This house seemed to bigger on the inside than it was on the outside and this room, it was very similar to somewhere he knew extremely well indeed.

Paul looked at him, "Quite a place, you to seem to know it?"

"It looks somewhat familiar, like a place I know very well." The Doctor admitted.

"Great, I think this could be the place then, if you're O.K., I'll let you get settled back in. Here is the medication." He handed over a white box containing blister packs of green pills. "I'll come back to see how your are tomorrow morning, here's my card, any problems give Dr. Ross or myself a call."

They walked back to the front hall and the Doctor showed him out. He closed the door, and leant against it a took a deep breath, alone at last, for the past few days there had always been people around him, and he was someone who enjoyed his own company for long periods. He went to the kitchen to make a cup of tea, using some long-life milk he found in the back of a cupboard. The milk in the fridge had bits floating in it, whoever had been living here had been gone for over a week.

Looking around, the upstairs was compact covering only the front part of the building, a bathroom and two bedrooms. He returned to the lower back room. It was as wide as the rest of the house and went back about twice it's width. At the back was a window covered with very heavy curtains which looked as if they were never opened. Pulling them aside he saw why the view was of a small yard with a bin, a couple of broken plant pots and a rusty bicycle. So this back room was an extension into what had once been the garden of a small London town house, this building appeared to be bigger on the inside but it didn't do it with dimensionally transcendental engineering. What was going on here, who was behind it? Tim Lord lived in house TARDIS like in appearance, but without anything actually too unusual to it, had he set this place up himself and forgotten about it, as he'd forgotten where the real TARDIS was? Time for another cup of tea.

There was a green led light flashing on a small table near the door of the front room. He moved over to look, it was a telephone answering machine, next to the light was a button, he pressed it. "You have seven new messages", announced a bright female computer voice, still managing to sound robotic and inhuman. He pressed the button again, "First new message received at ..." it was about two weeks ago.

"Hi Tim, it's Gordon, are you coming out tonight? We'll be at the Pump at the usual time, hope to see you there"

A Tim really lived here then, he pressed a couple more buttons, "Next new message received ..." Later that same evening.

"Tim, it's Stew are you there, Al and Gordon said they had rung you, but I thought I'd check? If you can't make it see you next week."

"Next new message." This one was received a week later.

"Hi Tim, Pump usual time? Don't want to play with Omar again, he's got no conversation."

Later that evening another voice presumably Al, "No show again Tim, well if you're on one of your expeditions let us know when you get back."

That had sounded a bit cold and fed up, it seemed Tim had a regular date at The Pump, whatever that was and he'd stood these guys up two weeks running, but what did he mean by expeditions? Was Tim in the habit of disappearing mysteriously?

"Next new message". This one was a youngish woman's voice Scottish by the sound of it, it seemed familiar.

"Doctor, Doctor are you there? It's Amy, Amelia Pond remember? I came round at our agreed time but you weren't there, and you didn't ring me." She sounded annoyed although trying to keep calm, but she managed to finish the message on a playful sounding note. "Anyway, call me, I miss you telling me about the Universe."

His admittedly single heart beat was going much faster, she'd said 'Doctor', not Tim, he'd talked about space with her, and that voice it was Amy Pond! He knew Amy Pond the latest of his long line of companions. Next to the phone was an address book it opened at 'A', the first name was Al, one of the calls for Tim maybe, he went straight to the next one, 'Amy Pond', he dialed the number quickly.

"Hello", answered a cautious sounding Celtic accented voice.

"Hello Amy, it's.." He paused Tim for Al, but Amy had asked for .. "It's the Doctor."

Her voice brightened, "Doctor, I thought you'd disappeared off the face of the Earth again. Where have you been? You stood me up you know."

Disappeared of the face of the Earth, was she referring to other planets? The real Amy Pond would be, and she obviously recognised his voice. "I skipped the Eye Of Orion, this time, I've been in hospital."

"Oh, dear, nothing serious I hope?"

"Got into a spot of bother, and came off the worse, or so it seems I can't actually remember the details."

"Sounds nasty, do you know who it was?"

"No idea, and I'm alright really, just have a slight limp."

"Well, we'll have to see what we can do about that. Do you want me to come round, if you're feeling up to it?"

"Definitely, in about an hour?"

"Whoa, you're keen, no I'm busy tonight, let me see, you're normally free on Thursday evenings aren't you, I can do tomorrow night at seven thirty, that O.K.?"

"Yep, tomorrows fine." He must have sounded off puttingly eager, but he was disappointed that he didn't seem to be her first priority. Maybe she had something arranged with Rory.

"Do you want me to dress as a policewoman again?"

He had a sudden memory of her dressed in a police uniform with a ridiculously short skirt handcuffing him to a radiator. "What, err no, just as usual will be fine."

"O.K. You're the boss, and I won't even charge you for the missed one, although I've had to put it up to £300.00 a night, cost of living keeps rising you know, alright?"

"Err, fine." He was struggling to keep up with this conversation.

"Right see you tomorrow" and she blew him a kiss and put the phone down.

He felt he needed a sit down too, he'd just spoken to Amy Pond, she'd called him 'Doctor', and he had arranged to meet her tomorrow night, but he'd agreed to pay three hundred pounds for the privilege, what was that about? Maybe in this warped version of reality Amy was some kind of therapist, but three hundred quid seemed a bit pricey for counselling, unless she did plumbing at the same time. Could Amy be a, well an expensive hooker, and she knew him, and he knew her but for about three hundred pounds a time? If the latest of his companions was a lady of dubious reputation, what about the others? He thumbed through the address book, 'Donna' with a number next to it crossed out, under 'Dorothy' crossed out as well, Martha, Rose the same. Was that what his companions actually were ladies of the night? Come to think of it 'companions', it was a strange word, not colleagues, not girlfriends, but all of them, and what about Adric, and Turlough, what about Susan for goodness sake?He must have been about seventy then, or maybe he wasn't.

Something was certainly not right here, but with his own memory so dodgy, he was struggling to make sense of any of it. He was the Doctor but being the Doctor was becoming too confusing, he'd try a 'Tim' number and see if that made any sense, if he hadn't made this 'Pump' meeting for two weeks then perhaps tonight was the time to reappear. He dialed again, this time the number labeled Al.

The Pump turned out to be The Village Pump, a pub a short walk from his home. He had found a table with three men about his apparent age sitting at it and a fourth empty chair, two packs of playing cards lay in front of them. They had evidently recognised him, when he approached, he sat down and went though the whole just out of hospital explanation, he didn't mention which type of hospital, and loss of memory thing.

"So you bumped your head, Tim, and lost your memory then, like in a cartoon?" Asked Gordon in a matter of fact kind of way.

"Sort of, I remember lots of things but not how they are when I find them. I remembered Amy Pond, but she doesn't seem to be quite how she should be".

There were blank looks around the table, "Amy Pond, ginger girl, Scottish, No?"

"You never mentioned an Amy Pond, you old dog. Perhaps when you get you memory back you can tell us all about her."

Instantly their minds jump to sex, what was it round here with everybody and sex?

"Maybe another blow to the head make it all come back again, it worked for Oliver Hardy. We could see if they have an outsized frying pan in the kitchens."

"That wasn't one of the therapies they recommended in the hospital, maybe I should suggest it?"

"We'll see how long this amnesia lasts, what do you want to drink?"

"I don't know. What do I normally have to drink?"

"You have got it bad, I'll get you a Guinness." Gordon went to the bar.

Stew lent in towards him conspiratorially, "Alright you remembered Amy Pond, whoever she is, but do you remember us, or more importantly me?" he exchanged a look with Al who didn't seem offended.

The Doctor, evidently known to these guys as Tim, looked at the pair of them opposite him, "Now don't take this the wrong way, I'm sure you are all splendid chaps but no, not really. How do I err, know you exactly?"

They did seem to take it the wrong way, at least a bit. "You haven't known me as long the other two, only about ten years, you went to school with Stew and Gordon, so maybe about fifteen years for them. Replied Al.

"And you and Gordon are brothers?" The physical resemblance was quite strong.

"Yes."

Well thank goodness he had got that right. Gordon returned with the drinks, a black pint was put down in front of the Doctor, all three of them looked at him expectantly, was this some kind of test, did he like Guinness or was he known for hating it? He sipped cautiously at his drink.

"Interesting." He stated and then paused a little, letting the flavour roll around his mouth. "Good choice." he said to Gordon. He seemed to pass the test, there was a slight lessening of tension.

"Wait a minute. Al, short for not Alex, but Alistair right?"

"Yes."

"And you two are brothers, your surname wouldn't be Lethbridge would it?"

"It might be"

He looked round the table, "Alistair, Gordon Lethbridge, Stewart. Ha!"

"You remember us now then?"

"Yes, well no, but I remember something. Shall we try to make as normal an evening as we can out of this and I'll see what else comes up."

"O.K." Replied Alistair, "Do you remember how to play Bridge?"

"Bridge whist, auction bridge or contract bridge?"

"em, contract bridge, I think."

"Whist based, four person card game. Two teams bid for a contract to make tricks over six, nominating a trump suit. The first team to win two out of three games by scoring over a hundred points wins the rubber."

"Well that seems settled, let's cut for dealer."

"One thing before we start, where is Omar?"

Again glances were exchanged, the Doctor persisted, "You said on the telephone you were fed up with playing with Omar, who is he?"

"Omar Sharif, of course."

"You play this game with an eighty year old Egyptian actor?"

"Not quite, if we don't have four people we play a three man version of the game, of our own devising."

"Well of your devising really." Interjected Stewart looking at the Doctor.

"The fourth hand is dealt, but is the dummy, even in the bidding. We call it Omar after Omar Sharif, because he's a famous bridge player, and because Stew was taught to play by a man who had once beaten the real Omar in a game." Continued Gordon.

"And was justly proud of the fact." Added Stuart.

"Hence Omar has no conversation."

"Exactly."

"Il muto." Said the Doctor.

"Sorry?"

"The mute one, it's what Italians call the dummy hand."

"You always were a font of useless information. Your deal."

"Let me see, that's four spades, doubled, two hundred and forty below and five hundred for the rubber."

"What ever happened to you it hasn't affected your ability with cards."

The evening has gone well, partly because the card playing kept conversation light, and no one got too in depth as to why the Doctor couldn't remember them, and partly because he found his three companions, that word again, easy to get along with, as if they had been friends for years. Last orders had long been called and it was time to leave.

"Right let's go." Said Al, he turned to the Doctor, "Will you be alright remembering the way home Tim?" He asked with a wicked grin.

"I'll be fine. I'm sure I'll find it right where I left it."

"Are you coming to Skeptics In the Pub on Tuesday?" Stew asked him.

"Which would be?" The doctor asked.

Stewart sighed, "Which would be, a sciencey, talky thing, in a pub, at half seven on Tuesday. The Wellington, on Waterloo Street. You love it believe me."

"Great, see you there, goodnight."

The Doctor left and walked to his home, which had not moved at all whilst he was out.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

The next morning he awoke with a bit of a hangover, and several cups of tea later, decided to investigate his back room some more. Again he felt at home in it's spacious, anachronistic chaos. Standing in it he didn't feel confined to the early twenty-first century, mind you everything did seem to be from Earth, and he couldn't see anything from beyond the current year. Still whatever had been going on here, someone selling items purloined from the past, was a much less serious problem than a trade in items from the planets own future.

The central circular table had six computer on it, all facing outwards in different directions, the computers were of varying ages, a couple looked bang up to date for twenty-eleven, the others were of differing degrees of antiquity themselves, one at least thirty years old had a tiny myopically curved monitor, with characters visible on it, burned into the phosphor, even though it was switched off. Next to the computer immediately facing the door was an ostentatious red lever, begging to be pulled, so pull it,he did. A hum filled the air, and there was an immediate whooshing sound as six sets of cooling fans switched on, the monitors flickered into life and little lights,green and amber, flashed on and off all over the table. Wound into the cables which led upwards from the table's center to the ceiling, where a light fitting had one been, the room was now lit by wall mounted lamps, were blue Christmas tree lights. They appeared to pulse upwards then downwards, from table to ceiling, then back again.

Within a couple of minutes he was presented with six active computer screens, moving an old tea cup, a biscuit wrapper and some Chinese medicine leaflets from the keyboards he began to explore. All the computers were networked together and most had internet access, one started playing music as soon as it booted up. Bach, Goldberg Variations, it seemed to have a vast music library on it from which it played tracks at random. One machine took it's self straight to the Google homepage, one to Tim's antiques web site, the oldest displayed a bright green Unix log in and two were high end games machines. Four computers claimed they now had important updates to install.

The Doctor took a step back and looked at the whole lit up edifice. Last night the Brigadier's three name-sakes had all recognised him as Tim, and this set up he was looking at, had clearly been built by someone with an ascetic eye for TARDIS consoles. It looked as if Tim was an identity he had created at some point then forgotten, or had his memory been removed? The worrying thing was if 'Tim' had felt the need to create all this, what had happened to the real TARDIS?

The doorbell rang, an old fashioned sounding chime, it would be the CPN. Moving into the rest of the house seemed like crossing into another world, the Doctor shut the door behind him and walked down the hallway. As the front door opened Paul looked him up and down, and asked if he was alright.

"A slight hangover, that's all." The Doctor replied, running one hand across his forehead to tidy his unruly fringe.

"I appreciate you may want to celebrate your freedom, but I wouldn't over do it so soon after being in hospital, if I were you." Said Paul a little stuffily. He inquired after the Doctors memory and how he was settling in, who he had gone to the pub with, how it had gone on, and then, as if it was the class pet that the Doctor had taken home to look after, he asked to see the medication. They went upstairs together, the green pills were in their box by the Doctor's bed. Paul took them out and probably not as subtly as he thought he did, counted them, he seemed satisfied. The Doctor had been removing the appropriate number at intervals and burying them in the kitchen bin. Tablets counted, Paul relaxed, the Doctor had passed the test, and as long as he wasn't sitting in the corner with his underpants on his head and a pencil up each nostril saying, 'Wibble', he could be left alone. Paul chatted very briefly about nothing in particular, and then left.

At almost exactly half seven that evening, the door bell rang again. The Doctor, with a great deal more anticipation than he had greeted the CPN, opened the door and there stood Amy Pond, exactly as he remembered her, red top, very short denim skirt and dark tights. Come to think of it she was dressed rather like a tart. She strode in closing the door behind her, put her hands on his shoulders and tried to kiss him. "What?" He tried to say through her lips, as they pressed on his. She sensed his reluctance, pulled back and started to lift her top. "Maybe if I just." She started to say.

The Doctor grabbed the hem of her top and pulled it back down again before it could so much as clear her midriff. "No, no, no, no. You're Amy Pond, you're not.., you're human!" The stopped himself and took a breath. "Look, is this what we usually do?"

"Not exclusively, but mostly yes."

"Right, O.K.. Look, I em., I've lost part of my memory, bump on the head and all that, hence the hospital. I remember you, Amelia Pond, very well, but not all the, err, you know."

"What else do you remember?

"I remember you in the police uniform."

"That was part of the 'err you know'"

"Yes, right, could we just talk, for a bit, catch up fill in the gaps so as to speak?"

"You can talk all evening if you like, but it'll still cost the same." She said a little huffily and held out her hand.

He needed to prolong this in some way, so he handed over the money, which he'd had ready. It quickly disappeared into a small pocket on her skirt.

"Amy Pond, you're Amy Pond and,". He nearly said the mother of River Song, but the woman in front of him didn't look like the mother of anybody. "Fish fingers and custard, do you remember fish fingers and custard?" He asked.

"No." She replied, "You're." She paused. "Funny"

"Funny. Funny's good, isn't it?"

"I meant funny, peculiar."

"Rory, what about Rory?"

"He's my boyfriend you know that"

"And he's happy with all this?"

"Yes he is. Let's not make this about me. We used to have fun, surely you remember that?"

"You mean the sex?"

"Well that, but looking through your telescope, as well, and you would talk about space, and your bow tie, your silly bow tie, come to think of it that was pretty funny too."

"Well, bow ties are cool."

"No, they're not, but you know, the whole thing, it was sort of fun."

"Well that's still me, still the Doctor, still fun, but there's stuff I don't remember and there's stuff that is different from how it ought too be, and I still haven't worked out why."

"In my line of work, people talk about stuff they wouldn't normally, you hear things they wouldn't tell anybody else. This hospital you were was a psychiatric one?"

"Not at first, I really have had some kind of accident I do not remember, but they transferred me to the nut house when I couldn't remember it. When I still didn't remember it they gave up and let me out again."

"If you ask me you've just had what my Aunt would have called a nervous breakdown. It happens a lot. Come with me."

She took his hand and led him through the back room and up the spiral staircase in its far corner, she seemed pretty familiar with this place at least. They emerged through a hatch onto the roof, and were on a flat area surrounded by railings, large but not quite as large as the room underneath. In front of them was a bulky object hidden under a tarpaulin. Amy gestured at some heavy bricks securing the edge of the covering and the Doctor lifted them clear, she then picked up the edge of the material of pulled it off. Underneath was an impressive telescope, the Doctor's face lit up and he ran a hand along the body of the instrument. "Ah." He exclaimed pulling the lens caps free. Low clouds covered about half the sky, but stars shone in the rest, and here at the back of the building it was quite dark, you couldn't see any street lights directly, although the clouds had a faint orange glow about them unknown in less urban areas. He looked through the eye piece and slowly turned the telescope round.

"What can you see?" she asked.

"Orion, well it is autumn, and there the Pleiades, called the Seven Sisters, but there are actually hundreds of them, hot young stars, and more being born all the time, only 400 light year away in the constellation of Taurus."

Here, he moved the telescope round and stepped aside to let Amy look through the eyepiece. "That double star in the center, one yellowish and one red, has a planet circling it or rather them, which has a double sun rise and double sunset every day. Like Tatooine in Starwars, in fact it was named Tatooine when it was discovered even though it's a little cold to support life."

"I've never seen Starwars, it came out before I was born."

The Doctor, whose apparent age meant he shouldn't have been born when the earlier Starwars films came out was surprised. "Oh, well it's very pretty anyway, and there, is M31, the Andromeda galaxy two and a half million light years away from our own galaxy a trillion stars swirling around in space."

"That's you, alright, the tweed, the enthusiasm, the funny little bow tie. The Grandeur Of The Universe."

"Good, 'The Grandeur Of The Universe'. Pretty much my stock in trade. That and fighting the bad guys."

"The Grandeur thing definitely, but fighting what bad guys? I don't know about that. I thought you spent most of you're time in this little house cataloging antiques, but I don't know what you do when I'm not here."

The Doctor found it very hard to disbelieve Amy Pond. He felt he was talking with the real Amy and she was not lying, but that didn't make any sense. "You don't remember us traveling together?"

"Going away? No, we could do but I am rather expensive for whole weekend. I think you've just slipped your moorings a little. You've got stressed out and got things a little mixed up. Let's put this away." She started pulling the cover back over the telescope.

Helping her he persisted with his questioning. "You know me as the Doctor, though everybody else seems to want to call me Tim, of all the names to choose from."

"People rarely use their real names, with me, in my line of work. 'The Doctor' is a little odd, no odder than a bow tie on a young man, but yeah I know you are called Tim really, I have been coming here for two years. These things have a way of coming out."

They went back inside. "Pond, you make a very convincing case, but something is not right here, and I'm going to find out what it is."

"I hope you do, we're not going to, 'you know', are we?"

"It's not that you're not very.." he gestured from her head to her toes, "But I don't think that's what we should be doing, it doesn't fit in with the Amy I know, and you say Rory knows all about this and he's fine with it."

She bristled, he had touched a nerve, "Why all this sudden concern about Rory, you've never met him."

"Haven't I, oh, jolly good then." Never met the boy who waited, that was a turn up, he wouldn't freak her out again by describing him, assuming he could describe him. "Wait, one more thing, when you were young, did you have a crack in your bedroom wall, about so big?" he gestured holding his hands about two feet apart.

"No." She replied abruptly, seemingly having decided enough humouring the mad man was enough.

"Sure, nothing, no strange sounds, no voices?

"Definitely not, I must be going. Good bye Doctor. See you err. again." And she hurried through the door into the night.

The next morning it was the lack of a crack in Amy's bedroom wall that bothered him the most. That had been instrumental in their meeting, the Amy from last night was familiar in so many ways, but if she had no memory of their meeting then what ever had existed between them, if anything had, wasn't based on anything he shared with his Amy, in fact it seemed to be based on something much seedier. He felt stuck in a version of his life where all his friends were not what they should be, depending on what was actually going on here, he had no idea how it would pan out.

He decided to take a positive step forward and rebuild his sonic screwdriver. The trouble was he could not remember exactly how, when he sat down and really thought about it, he could picture it in his mind, he knew he had built replacements before, he still missed the one the Terileptils had shot even though it lacked the functions he had put in later models, but this time he could not recall how to put one together. It was frustrating he couldn't even look in up in the TARDIS databank, as he need the sonic to find the TARDIS. He sat in front of a poor man's imitation TARDIS console, wondering if it held the information, but how could it? It was only a collection of Earth computers on a table. In the end he gave up, made a cup of tea, and then went shopping.

The Wellington, aptly on Waterloo Street, was another pub within walking distance of his home. Skeptics in the pub took place in the rear half of the bar where rows of seats had been laid out facing a projector screen and a microphone.

As they took their seats quite a few people nodded greetings at the Doctor, he turned to Al and asked him if he knew lots of people here. "Well we only see them once a month, but I think your clothing stands out and so people recognise you."

"So you have always known me to dress like this?" The Doctor was again aware now he was out in company, that he dressed differently from most people who looked his age.

"Not exactly like that, tweed jacket and bow tie, but always something odd, vaguely Edwardian to be charitable, long jackets, cravats even a cricket outfit. Although once you turned up in a red tee shirt and black leather jacket, and it just wasn't you, it was odder to see you in normal clothes, than your own strange outfits."

An older bearded man in a tweed jacket not unlike the Doctors stood up and came to the microphone. "Good evening and welcome to this month's Skeptics In The Pub. If anyone has ordered tee shirts, they have now come in so please see me in the interval and have your money handy. Now after last months fascinating talk on galaxy formation and classification, we have something a little more hard hitting this evening, so let me introduce with out any delay our speaker. Rebecca Shepard has written for the Guardian and appeared on Radio Four, her primary concern is animal welfare but she feels there are many issues that she has in common with the Skeptical movement, please welcome Rebecca Shepard."

A young woman of about thirty, close to the Doctor's apparent age, with long blond hair and glasses stood up to speak. "Good evening, I'm Rebecca Shepherd, I work for a university research department, but in my spare time, what there is of it, I am interested in how we treat and mistreat animals. Now as Skeptics we rightly are appalled by charlatans selling alternative medicine. To us it is enough that members of the public are duped out of their money and given false hope by those that sell supposed cures with no evidence that they work and plenty that they don't. As we know failure to produce evidence that something that has been sold for years has any effect at all it as good as saying it does not do any good. In fact we our campaigns try to point out that homeopathy, for example, not only has no reasonable mechanism by which it could work, but produces no demonstrable effects. Now you do not need to understand the mechanism for a therapy to be valid, if you administer it and it works then you have a medicine, albeit one you do not fully understand, and quite a few treatment in conventional medicine are not fully understood but they do produce actual effects which get people better."

"However as you know, once you tell someone, something not only doesn't work but doesn't produce any effects at all, such as homeopathy which is only a drop of pure water on a sugar pill, then the response you get is a shrug and the question 'where's the harm then?'"

"It seems taking money from often vulnerable people is not enough to raise the ire. There seems to be a let the buyer beware attitude. There are other victims however." She pressed a button on her laptop, and the screen behind her showed a picture of a scrawny looking black bear in a tiny cage. "Recently a group of Chinese doctors have been leading an outcry against this practice and they are gaining a lot of public support, in a country were the population are not exactly used to the power of public protest. This bear is kept in a tiny cage and milked for it's bile through a hole cut into it's gall bladder through it's stomach wall. The wound is left open so it be milked regularly. The bears are underfed and denied water to make them produce more bile. Over seven thousand bears are kept in this way on bear farms. Bear bile is thought by traditional medicine practitioners in China to cure digestive, stomach and kidney problems. Now I would say that even if bear bile was a miracle cure the cost of it's production is too high.

It is not only the bears, think of any endangered large mammal, elephants, tigers, rhinos, they are all being hunted to extinction. The news says poachers are killing these animals but why would they do so? The only reason poachers do this is because they is a ready market for endangered creatures body parts to make 'medicines'. Tiger bones to give you ferocity and strength, rhino horn to give you a stiffy. We are constantly being told what an enormous market China represents and that is true, supply will never keep up with demand until the supply of animals is exhausted."

The Doctor looked around him, people had laughed a little at the mention of the word, 'stiffy', but they were paying attention and looked interested. He sort of assumed humanities default setting was usually apathy, it took his arrival to stir things up and get something done. These people seemed to be able to stir stuff up on their own, it felt quite encouraging.

"Back in 1965, Chairman Mao promised healthcare for the whole Chinese population. This promise was impossible to fulfill with the number of doctors available and so an system of barefoot doctors was established. Agricultural workers were given six months training in basic hygiene, nursing and medical procedures, then returned to the communities from which they had come, to help their peers. Inevitably the care provided was basic, but it was a great improvement upon the absolute nothing which had existed before hand. There was a system for the referral of seriously ill patients to hospitals and better qualified doctors, but in practice resources were limited and this rarely happened. It was a case of western medicine for the party officials and urban elite, and bare foot doctors for the rural poor. The barefoot doctors were encouraged to use herbs grown in their own gardens as medicine and also to use other cheap alternative remedies with in the price range of their patients. Much of what today is known as traditional Chinese medicine actually dates back to this period only as far as the nineteen sixties. Unfortunately Mao created a vast codified system of untested medicine which exists to this day and has spread to the West under this traditional guise, barefoot doctors were abolished in 1981, some qualified as village doctors, some stayed on as assistants, but the grip of alternative practices on the population remained and the cost to endangered species has never been greater."

"Wealthy Chinese have access to Western style medicine but curiously it is wealthy Westerners who seek out so called traditional Chinese medicine, and I believe it would help our fight to save many threatened animals, as well as those farmed bears, if more Westerners understood the origins and impact of the 'traditional and natural' approaches they champion. Thank you."

There was applause, and the drinks interval was declared, the Doctor turned to Al, "I though you said it was all sciencey stuff?"

"Well you take a skeptical, scientific approach to the world, following logic and evidence, and you quickly discover half of the world is trying to rip you off. So it sort of becomes a kind of consumer activism."

Well following the logic and evidence made sense to the Doctor but the thing that grabbed him was the cause, or not the actual cause although he did not like to think of those bears trapped in their tiny cages, but the cause the bears represented. Their plight was a definite evil, treating animals in such a way to produce and sell a worthless medicine could not be defended, and he had to admit, just being in a crowd that placed it's self in opposition to such a thing was a thrill, it made him feel alive and reminded him of who he was and what he was for.

During the drinks interval the man who had made the introductions at the beginning, came up to the Doctor, who was stood holding his pint of Guinness. "Hello Tim or should I say Doctor?"

"Should you?" Replied the Doctor a little startled. "I mean why 'Doctor'?"

"Surly that was you leaving those comments on my blog, I really like the one about reversing the the polarity of the chi flow, you know like you said last month. When I saw those posts signed 'the Doctor', I thought it had to be you."

What ever the truth of the matter it would be best to put the man's mind at rest. "Yes, sorry I post a lot of stuff on line. I am the Doctor, and this is my friend Al."

"Hi Al, yes I thought so. Should interest you tonight the Chinese medicine stuff, I remember last month you were quite worked up about a shop near where you lived. Something to do with childless couples I think."

"Was I? Interesting."

"You said you were going to give them some guidance you had downloaded from the British Fertility Society."

There was a pause, as the Doctor remembered nothing of this. Al interjected trying to rescue the conversation. "You'll have to excuse my friend, he's been having some memory problems lately."

"Oh. I'm sorry to hear that nothing too serious hope."

"We don't think so."

"Well, nice to see you again." And their host drifted off.

"Tim you're going to have to stop being quite so vague all the time." Al said.

"It's a bit hard when everyone seems to know more about your business than you do." The Doctor replied. So this wasn't his first foray into the world of alternative medicine, why had he been worrying about it when last month's talk had been on galaxy classification? Posting on line as the Doctor made sense as Amy knew him as the Doctor also, and hadn't he seen some Chinese medicine leaflets on the console, the computer keyboard?

After the drinks break it was time for questions, hands went up, and a roving mike threaded it's way through the crowd. The first few people asked about the age of some of the techniques mentioned, some were truly ancient, some recent inventions. The practitioners of a curious procedure involving burning a candle placed in someone's ear, claimed it to have originated with the Hopi Native Americans, but the Hopi tribe have repeated asked manufactures to remove any reference to them from their products as this was not the case.

The Doctor stuck up his hand and the roving mike found him. "Do you have a plan?". He asked.

Rebecca looked puzzled, "I'm sorry, a plan for what?"

"You've painted a picture of an evil, an unpleasant con-trick on humans, an occasionally dangerous waste of time and money, but if you are a rhino or an elephant a deadly peril. If you are a black bear, a definite evil on an industrial scale. Do you have a plan to defeat it?"

Next to the Doctor Al started shifting around and looking uncomfortable. Rebecca paused, smiled a little and then replied. "Evil is strong word, but from the bears point of view this is pretty bad. We need to raise public awareness of these issues. Get the word out, in the way that the ten twenty three campaign is for homeopathy, let people know that these 'therapies' do not help them and cause animal suffering."

"Which won't help any bears in the short term."

"We can not just go to China and set the bears free, and we must stay within the law, but this can be stopped, pressure in China, and around the world is growing. Next question, please."

Going to China, setting the bears free and preferably blowing up the bear farms seemed the sensible cause of action to the Doctor. He'd learned in his long life that evil must be faced up to and fought otherwise it would just trample over opposition and thrive, didn't anyone else think like that? Certainly it seemed to take his intervention to get things moving whenever he encountered such things. The mike stayed away from the Doctor for the rest of the session, and when it was over Al seemed keen to drink up and move on quite quickly.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter Four

The next morning the Doctor took a stroll to his local Chinese medicine shop, not to start any direct action, but just to take a look at the situation for himself. He'd seen it on the way to the Village Pump, a couple of nights ago. It was a bright morning and well dressed people strolled between the shops, Wimbledon was looking at it's best in the sunshine. The small establishment was called 'Herbal Nature', large green writing on a black background underneath in an eastern looking font it declared 'Traditional Chinese Medicine'. It was had to see through the windows as they were covered in posters declaring the wonders of the services the shop provided, one claimed they could help bad backs, another talked of headaches, and another ear-candling. To the top was a picture of a happy smiling baby, 'Having trouble conceiving?' It said, 'We have helped desperate couples have babies'.

The Doctor straightened his bow tie and opened the door. Inside were shelves of vitamin pills and racks of leaflets. Behind the counter was a pretty young Chinese woman black hair in a tight bun, wearing a white doctor's coat. She turned a smiling face towards him. "Good morning."

"Hello, I am the Doctor, I wonder if you could help me I'm thinking of having a baby."

Upon seeing her customer properly, her demeanor changed instantly she looked angry and afraid, turning to the back of the shop she shouted something loud and urgent in Chinese. The Doctor couldn't understand her, where was the TARDIS? It should be translating for him where ever it was hidden. An older man's face appeared at the edge of the curtain which screened a door way at the rear, he turned and shouted more Chinese behind him.

"You must leave now, go." The woman hissed at him.

"Well I could leave, but I've got a bit of a mystery to solve and I think you people know something about it." The Doctor responded.

Two younger Chinese men emerged from the back room and moved toward the Doctor.

"You should have learned you're lesson last time, why have you come back." Said one in a strongly accented voice.

"Stop trying to harm our father's business." said the other equally strongly accented.

"I rather think it's your fathers business that's harming others." The Doctor replied.

"We hurt no-one, you leave us alone." And as he said this he punched the Doctor in the stomach.

The Doctor had been about too say something pithy about having science and reason on his side, instead he found himself doubled over trying to catch his breath, he quickly moved so a case of pills was between him and the two men.

The man and woman both shouted something which sounded more like it meant, 'not in the shop', rather than 'don't hurt him', or 'stop it.' The two Chinese circled toward him, this was not how these things were supposed to go he couldn't even do anything clever with his sonic screwdriver. His two assailants lunged at him, the case went over with a crash, but they managed to grab his arms and started to drag him towards the doorway at the back. The shop door opened and quickly shut again as someone thought better of buying some herbs today.

He must have really done something to upset these people, unless, he looked closely at the men's faces as he struggled, they were weren't Chinese, they weren't even human. Their pupils were snake-like and their teeth pointed. As they reached the rear doorway the curtain was pulled to one side and the Doctor caught a glimpse of the room beyond, the walls were lined with boxes but in one corner was something he had seen before, a catalytic extraction chamber ,a device for sucking the life force out of it's victims prolonging the life of it's owner. Magnus Greel had used one in Victorian London as he sought to repair his Time Cabinet. He certainly didn't want to end up in that, as they approached the door way he got his good leg against the wall and pushed as hard as he could. He escaped their grip and crashed to the floor half way back across the shop, more cases were tipped over. He scrambled towards the door but felt his legs being grabbed just as the door opened and a policeman stepped in.

"Well it appears that, they may want to press charges"

"Want to press charges, they attacked me."

The Doctor was sat on an uncomfortable chair in front of a Formica table in a police station, opposite him sat an unfriendly policeman in plain uniform, no hi-vis jacket or gadgets. "You walked into their shop, and said, 'Hello', and then they attacked you?"

"Pretty much, yes."

"They say you attacked them, making threats, and using racist abuse. It could do go very badly for you if they want to pursue it."

"Racist abuse? That's ridiculous."

"The arresting officer said you were calling them evil aliens."

"Have you looked it the back of their shop?"

"No should we have, the shop is in rather a mess?"

"Well they shouldn't have thrown me around in it then." This probably was not the time to bring up the catalytic extraction chamber, it would have been moved by now and he was having trouble being believed as it was, once again. Why had the confrontation gone so badly, usually, he was sure, he handled things better than that. He always had a plan, except this time he had just marched in, and it had not worked. He couldn't think of a way he could have got out of that one even with his sonic screwdriver.

"We can still get you a duty solicitor, if you want one."

"Do you usually offer victims of assault a solicitor?"

"However one of the names you gave us has checked out. Apparently you have were recently discharged from a psychiatric hospital."

The Doctor had only belatedly given the name Timothy Lord, after trying the Doctor and John Smith unsuccessfully. This hadn't helped convince anyone of his innocence. "I had a short stay, I've been having memory problems." Hopefully that sounded as far from psychopathic violence as possible.

"Did they give you any medication to take?"

"Yes."

"And have you been taking it?"

"Of course I have." The Doctor didn't even sound convincing to himself. Upfront honesty was more his style. Lies and evasion didn't suit him.

If you are prepared to be re-admitted, we can discharge you into their care. We could have you sectioned but it would look better if you went voluntarily, if this does come to court.

Save paperwork more likely, "Alright, I'll go quietly. Out of the frying-pan into the fire."

"Let us hope not. They should be able to help you in there if they just kept all their patients in long enough to make sure they were taking their medication, our job would be a lot easier."

After several hours and only one cup of tea, an ambulance with a couple of burly male nurses had turned up and he was taken back to hospital. He didn't get his old bed back though, that was taken by a greasy haired young man who stared fixedly into space. He was put into a side room of his own. Some of the patients smiled in greeting at him as he passed, the staff body language was very different, he had been a naughty boy and let them all down. All I did was walk into a shop and say "hello", he thought. A shop run by life force stealing aliens admittedly, well with all the locked doors at least he should be safe in here, he doubted they had any transmat technology.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

After a while Dr. Ross called by. "Hello Tim you've had another episode I hear."

"An episode? I went into a shop said 'Hello' and was attacked."

"It is a serious matter being brought in here by the police, but We'll talk about exactly what happened another time. I'm a bit pushed today, you were not on my list of appointments this morning. I could increase the dose of your medication but I'll assume you haven't actually been taking what we've been giving you up to now, so I'll prescribe a more easy to take form, I'll give you something to help you sleep as well, and we'll see you tomorrow. Goodbye Tim."

Overuse of his supposed name, the Doctor thought.

He lay on his bed, he had a new set of aches and pains, nothing as bad as last time, but it felt as if he was back at square one, although this time he knew who exactly was responsible for his injuries, if not exactly what they were up to. After a while there was a knock at the door and two nurses came in with the drugs trolley. They passed him a little plastic pot and a glass of water as usual, but this time there were no pills, there was a small amount of liquid in the pot. "Same medication as before they told him but in an easier to swallow form." They watched him like hawks until he drank it, after the first pot there was a second one and then they left.

He quickly began to feel sleepy, but he'd had a hard day, he could do with some sleep.

The next day he was back in Ross's Office. To be honest it broke the monotony, after a few hours he was already thoroughly bored here. He was fully mobile this stay and could spend time in the day room but didn't like to. Most of his fellow patients were enthusiastic smokers, and although they had to go to a little outside area to indulge their hobby, the smell followed them back in on their clothes and the place stank. His internet privileges seemed to have been revoked, so he'd picked up any books he found lying around the place and had read those in his room instead.

"Tim"

"Doctor, please."

"Yes?"

"No, Doctor, I am the Doctor. Remember I told you I had no memory of this Tim nonsense." The Doctor was back in Ross's little office on his second day back in the hospital.

"I see. We looked at Tim's childhood home on line, you've been living in his house, did you meet anyone who knew you as Tim?"

"I met some people who knew me as Tim, and some who knew me as the Doctor."

"So people in the outside world recognised you as Tim?"

"Some did, some recognised me as the Doctor, some of them had to be mistaken."

"Who recognised you as the Doctor?"

"Amy Pond"

"An old girlfriend?"

"A girl I traveled with for a time." This was slightly disingenuous, the Doctor knew Amy had also said she knew him as Tim as well as the Doctor, but there was no need to make things too easy for Ross.

"Do people find it easier to relate to you as Tim or as the Doctor?"

"Doesn't it matter more whether I am Tim, or the Doctor?"

Dr. Ross changed the subject. "You were brought back in here after an incident with the police, could you tell me what happened?"

"The incident was not with the police, they arrived after wards to pick up the pieces."

"So who was it with then?"

"Strangers, strangers to me and strangers to London."

"So strange people were doing, something in London, what exactly?"

"There is a device, a heavy brass cabinet, big enough for a person to stand up in, it's called a catalytic extraction chamber."

"That's something I have never heard of, what is it used for?"

"You would not have, it's not twenty first century technology. It is used to remove and store the life force from an individual, usually a young and fit individual and then transplant as it were the energy into an older person, prolonging their existence at the cost of someone else's."

"And you saw one of these in the shop you were arrested in?"

"I saw one there yes, but only after they had attacked me. I don't what they are up to, but such a thing can only be used for evil purposes."

"How would they have one of these things?"

"Because they're aliens."

"Aliens as in outer space aliens, here in London?"

"There are lots of aliens in London, some you couldn't tell to look at, some are in disguise and some lurk underground or in the shadows. I am an alien in London, and you can't tell to look at me."

"You are an alien?"

"A Time Lord from Gallifrey, with two hearts, well one heart, at the moment, we've been over this." Why had he not searched the house for a fob watch when he had had the chance?

"O.K., O.K., back to the shop, you went in and what happened?"

"I went in, said, 'Hello', and they attacked me."

"You just said, 'Hello?' Did they ask you to leave before it got nasty?"

The Doctor thought back, "The girl did say something about leaving, but in a warning me way. The two men pretty much attacked on sight."

"Why would they do that?"

"Because they had been or were about to be rumbled. They were up to their ghastly tricks in that back room, and I was going to find out."

"Did you know what was going on when you went in there?"

"I had no idea."

"Had you ever been in there before?"

"No, well maybe." The Doctor had to stop and think here. "It is possible, I don't remember. They may have recognised me, but with the gaps in my memory I do not know for sure."

"That will do for today I think. I'll see you again tomorrow. I think if we work at it the gaps in your memory it will come back."

"The drugs you are giving me, they're not for memory loss."

"They have often proved helpful in cases such as yours."

"They are anti-psychotics. There are no drug treatments for amnesia."

"Stick with them, they can help. I'll see you tomorrow, Doctor."

The Doctor was back in his room. The interview with Ross had ended rather abruptly, he wondered why. There was no chance the psychiatrist believed his tale of aliens running an alternative medicine store in London, admittedly it sounded on the face of it a little unlikely, but then he had seen them and their catalytic extraction chamber. His time with Ross had ended when he had mentioned his amnesia and the fact he needed to work on it, that must be a victory to the shrink, get the patient to admit they had a problem and then they would have to work at it.

Well he did have a problem, there was a memory issue, what had he been doing before he woke up here the first time, he didn't know. What else was going on, why was there a catalytic chamber hidden in the back of a Wimbledon shop, how did people claim to recognise him as Tim Lord, a poor pun of a name, why did Tim have a back room that resembled a TARDIS control center, and what had happened to Amy? The amnesia must be the key but how to regain the lost memories? He tried to remember, his long life was recallable in general terms, but he could only pick up the thread from his first time in the hospital before then it was a jumbled mess.

The next day none the wiser, he was back with Ross. "You claimed before to have a degree in Astrophysics, is that true?"

"Yes and no. No it's not true as such, but I could give any professional Astrophysicist a run for their money."

"I'll have to take your word for that, but astrophysics is a science so lets take a scientific approach, you also mentioned aliens, so how many inhabited worlds are there out there?"

"Thousands in our galaxy, in the Universe an almost infinite amount."

"That have actually been discovered?"

"By Earth science?"

"Lets stick with Earth science, unless you have any definite evidence to the contrary."

The Doctor knew he was being boxed in, but if he was having a scientific discussion surely he could not protest at being restrained by the available evidence. "Hundreds of extra-solar planets have been discovered, but none have been shown to harbour life yet. Planet detection is difficult and most of the ones found so far are too large too have earth like conditions, but the smaller ones are certainly out there and are being found, just not so easily as the larger ones. The chemicals upon which life depends, water, free oxygen and amino acids are extremely common in space, and out of the sample of three Earth sized planets in our solar system life is abundant on one of them, so life should be common in our galaxy."

"And aliens, as in intelligent beings, should they be common too?"

"Again out of our known sample of three, one planet has a technical civilisation, that hasn't lasted very long on a geological scale but if it can, then there should be many such civilisations out there."

"If it doesn't last, if we let global warming or some other disaster destroy us then there are probably not many other inhabited planets left out there."

"Global warming is not a disaster it's a mild inconvenience that you already have several ways of overcoming, there are some more pressing threats but none that can not be beaten. So if civilisations do not routinely destroy themselves then they are plentiful in the Universe." If they were having a competition to prove him mad, find logical holes in his story, or not then, thought the Doctor that was a point to him.

"Even if aliens are quite common, the distances between stars are vast, are they not, wouldn't that make travel between them difficult and the chances of them turning up on Earth remote?"

"Interstellar travel is certainly never going to be easy, even if you have vast amounts of energy, the limitations of the speed of light make it a very laborious business to travel from star to star, without some form of hyper-drive."

"Which wouldn't exist even on a theoretical basis on Earth?"

"No, not on Earth." The Doctor conceded, noting that Ross had looked as if he had guessed that last point, and would not have known otherwise if the Doctor had claimed scientists at CERN had developed a hyper drive in the Nineteen-eighties, which he was pretty sure they hadn't.

"When you were here before, there was an unfortunate reference to you as a time traveller, but you didn't seem to want to contradict this."

"I am a wanderer in the fourth dimension, an exile, if you want to put it more poetically."

"So you also claim time travel is possible as well as aliens."

"I demonstrated aliens were more than possible, they are a high statistical probability."

"So is time travel a high statistical probability?"

"Depends which direction you mean, we travel forwards in time all the time."

"Apart from the travelling forward in time at the rate of one second every second."

"Travel forward in time faster, is easy you just need to travel through space faster. Satellites in geo-stationary orbit are moving at twenty four thousand miles an hour, their on-board clocks appear to people on the ground to lose time as the velocity pushes the satellite forward in time. From the satellite's point of view life at the Earth's surface seems to have sped up. If the clocks were not constantly corrected for time travel, your GPS system would be useless."

"All right, that's a small, hard to measure, journey forward in time, to have truly claimed to travel in time you would have to be able to travel backwards as well as forwards."

"That also is possible, more difficult but possible. A black hole is a truly massive object that distorts space-time so that any thing orbiting it moves through time at a very different rate to the outside universe. Then at the centre of a black hole is a singularity, a place of infinite space time curvature where the passage of time in a normal way no longer exists. That is true of a normal black hole but there is a rare type of black hole, called a Kerr black hole, this is a fast rotating doughnut shaped phenomena, so that the singularity is not buried beneath the surface, but located in the empty centre of the ring. If you could pass through this eye of harmony, then you could emerge anywhere in space time any where in the universe."

"That is modern Earth science?"

"You could ask Roy Kerr, let me see 2011, I believe he has retired now and is living in Italy."

"O.K., accepting that, and frankly I'll have to take it as read, all this does sound terribly difficult. The technology involved to actually implement it would be way beyond anything on Earth."

"You don't understand so you find excuses."

"We did say, we would limit this discussion to Earth science."

"You said that, I agreed to play along."

"So, if someone could harness these immense cosmic forces and could travel back in time, then what, would they be able to actually murder their own grandfather."

"You mean create a paradox, they go back and commit the murder then meaning that they could not have been born and could not have committed the murder in the first place?"

"Yes, or maybe even something smaller. You don't have to have seen Sliding doors to realise, if every action we take could have infinite repercussions."

"Perhaps better not to have seen Sliding Doors at all." Interjected the Doctor.

"Yes perhaps not." Agreed Ross with a smile. "If a butterfly flapping it's wings can start a hurricane, then any action in the past could totally change the future."

"Then the web of time would be re-written."

"And causality would be thrown out the window."

"Causality just follows a more complicated non-linear path."

"If all these millions of future events are rewritten, then that must be like changing the cause of a Universe sized juggernaut, the energies needed would be immense."

"Which is why you need something as powerful as a Kerr black hole to do it."

"Quite. If at any time someone in the future developed time travel, ever, then would we not already know about it, if they could then travel back to the past we would have seen the results of their efforts before they even started doing it."

"We've already explored how difficult time travel is, it is never going to be as easy as popping down to the shops. It's bound to remain a rare activity."

"Well, I'll be honest, that's about as much as I can take in, in one session. Thank you Doctor, I'll see you again tomorrow."

Later in his room the Doctor sat thinking about the immense power of the TARDIS, it was impressive. Ross had done well keeping up with the implications and the more he thought about it the more staggering was Rassilon's gift of time travel. Not to forget the mad and resentful Omega, without his skill in black hole engineering, the Eye Of Harmony would never have been tamed in the first place. Made you proud to be a Time Lord. Mind you didn't a lot of other races have access to time travel technology? Daleks, obviously, but Sontarans, the Jagaroth, the family of Blood, even Magnus Greel and his catalytic extraction chamber, it seemed a lot for such a tricky procedure. How could the web of time stand it? Especially since the disappearance of the Time Lords.

After breakfast, and liquid medicine, the next morning, he was still pondering when a stray thought entered his mind. He had been absently gazing around his room and whilst most of his mind wondered about non-linear causality, a small part of it examined the hospital furniture and bemoaned it's utilitarian plainness, he found himself briefly concerned that the French table he had despatched had arrived safely.

After further cogitation on the web of time he realised what he had been thinking of, and tried to replay the concern in his mind. He could picture a Louis XV rosewood end table being carefully packaged, by him, for collection by a carrier. He had never had conformation that it had arrived safely.

That was strange it seemed unconnected with his other memories. Certainly nothing that had happened since he had first been in hospital, so it must be from before hand. Any returning memory was a bonus, but he would have wished for something more useful. Maybe he had been living as antique dealer, he used 'deep cover' before, a school teacher, an historian, a shop assistant, he'd even worked for UNIT for many years. The door to Tim's house did open with the TARDIS key, and the place did look like somewhere a Time Lord would put together to feel at home. He tried to remember more but nothing would come, unless he had dreamt the episode after his stay at Tim's house, and it was his dream he was remembering, unless more came back to him it was impossible to tell.


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

Later the same day when Ross asked him how his memory was doing, he mentioned his furniture delivery concerns, after all he had tried to be honest so far, there seemed little point in changing his tack now. Ross leant back and paused slightly, he looked to the Doctor as if he was trying conceal his enthusiasm.

"Can you describe the table?"

"It's a light coloured, heavily veneered, rosewood, four sided, but curved so it has an eight sided inlay, there is a single draw and it has curvaceous ormolu legs."

"Curvaceous?"

"Like a young gazelle about to leap, honestly."

"What about the packaging?"

"Cardboard and bubble wrap mostly."

"And the carrier?"

"Yellow truck, so it must be DHL. Hey, that's new, impressive."

"The driver of the truck?"

"No, nothing."

"I am sure other stuff will come back soon, in it's own time. There is a technique you can try of concentrating on your breath and seeing what pops into your mind. You breath slowly, experiencing the air entering and leaving your body, then you count ten breaths and then start again from zero. If something comes into your mind you observe it but try not to fall into it, you let it go and return to your breath. Try it, although it may take some time to achieve any results."

"Time, is not currently one of my problems."

"No, I don't suppose it is. Nothing has come back about the shop, where the incident took place?"

"No, nothing new. I walked in, I was attacked."

"Unusual chain of events that, random violence is not unknown but usually at night when the pubs close, rather than from shopkeepers in the middle of the day."

"They did have something to hide."

"The catalytic thing?"

"Yes."

"You mentioned it extracted people's life force."

"Yes, it does."

"I'm only a medical doctor, but how does that work exactly, I've never encountered a life force?"

The Doctor paused. "I'm not a medical doctor and to be honest I don't know."

"I've been present when patients have passed away." Ross continued. "They are alive, and then when one of their vital organs fails, their body can no longer keep them in that state, their heart ceases to pump blood or their lungs no longer take in enough oxygen. There does not seem to be any force keeping them alive, just a complex system of inter-related organs which will sustain the process of life whilst working, and fails to sustain it when one or more of them is no longer up to the job. Does that sound reasonable?"

"Yes it does, like I said I don't know exactly how it works."

The Doctor was feeling pissed off. Ross had a neat way of undermining him, and that neat way seemed to be analysing his story with logic and finding holes in it, just the way the Doctor should be undermining others, if they needed it. Aliens, fine he'd seen aliens in the last few days, and there should be plenty of aliens in the galaxy. Time travelling, seemed more problematic why couldn't he, a Time Lord, see how the web of time could survive breaks in causality? Either his memory was far worse than it seemed or what memories he did have were of uncertain veracity.

Thinking about it, he could not even draw comfort from his recent encounter with aliens, as that had coincided with the catalytic extraction chamber, which in hindsight seemed ridiculous. What was life force supposed to be? Could you extract the essence of a thousand metabolic process and transplant them into another person? It would be easier to transplant a whole set of organs, at least that made some kind of sense. He was sure he had seen aliens in the shop though he remembered them clearly, something must be going on there.

After an uninspiring hospital dinner and more liquid drugs, he thought he would give the memory recall exercise a try, if he had more material to work with maybe he could make some sense of what was going on, and answer more of his own questions about himself. He had recognised the method Ross had described as a Tibetan meditation technique called, watching the breath. Sitting upright he closed his eyes and began to breath slowly and steadily. Nothing came to mind at first, then he found himself thinking of Ross's beard and the way the man tugged at it whist listening, or whilst trynig to give the appearance of listening, well that was no good he was remembering that afternoon. Still counting his breaths he tried to gently nudge his mind into thinking about furniture again, the stuff in here really was a bit naff, cheap and badly made they must have to replace it frequently it couldn't last very long. No that was no good, he tried not to think of anything, and found himself wondering about his other bow ties, the black and blue ones where were they? In the draw by his bed he'd change the red one when he got home. No, try to think of something important, the TARDIS control room, he pictured himself standing at the console, brilliant white roundelled walls surrounding him, or were they dark wood, or coral? As he tried to sharpen the image in his mind it changed constantly, the walls the size of the room, the console itself, was the scanner screen in the wall or hanging from the ceiling? The TARDIS like back room came into his mind at least he could remember that clearly, it's central table, clambering on it to drag the wires up to the ceiling cable run.

That was it. He remembered setting up that room, putting the computers in the middle, his own unique layout and the pulsing up and down lights because he'd had no Christmas tree and then he never taken them down. Come to think of it he hadn't found the bow ties by the bed when he'd stayed in the house recently, so that must be from the past as well!

He kept it up,breathing, thinking, analysing, until in the small, but not silent in the hospital, hours of the night, when he felt too tired to carry on. It became easier to drift into sleep rather than memory. Great chunks of his past had returned, or Tim's past or someone's. He remembered living in London selling, well more than one table. He remembered going to a rather severe and old fashioned private school in Dorset after his parents had died, and he remembered some of his early childhood in an ancient rambling house in Ireland, presumably in, not on, Gallifrey, a hermit had lived in a hut half way up a mountain behind the house, and so he used to earn his parents ire by sneaking up to visit him to hear his stories.

This was all Tim's past though, not the Doctors which left him with a bit of a problem.

"There seem to be two lives in my head, Tim's and the Doctor's"

"That must seem even more confusing, let's hope it's the beginning of a break-through. Are they entirely separate, or are there overlapping areas?"

"Plenty of overlap, but many things are different in each version."

"The drugs we have given you, and the rest you have had here, have helped your memory, you just need to sort out where the truth lies, which version makes the most sense?"

"Well the Tim one mostly, I admit."

"The elements your subconscious used to construct the Doctor were from your real life, so most of it just needs a little reappraisal to straighten it out. You have been under a great deal of stress and your mind found a way to cope with it by being the Doctor."

"Because the Doctor was exciting and cool?"

"Because the Doctor could cope. He was your own heroic side writ large. A personality that could deal with difficult situations, because he could do so much."

"Not being the Doctor, makes life pretty boring and mundane."

"It makes life no better or worse than it is for the rest of us non-time traveling mortals, but remember the Doctor was and is part of you, integrate that and you can use it to cope with life's tricky stuff but without going over the top. Ask yourself what would the Doctor do?" "You don't necessarily have to do it."

He felt as if he had used the fob watch in reverse, used it to transform into the person he had really been all along rather than the Time Lord he was unknowingly disguised as. The idea of using an antique watch to transform a person from an alien into human was so silly, it gave a good guide as to which side of the fence truth lay. "The Doctor was a fiction so perfect I forgot who I was"

"Then who are you?"

"I am Timothy Lord. There you go, I said it."

"well done, maybe you could change into your own clothes now then?"

"No, these really are my clothes, bow ties are cool." It felt good to be able to big up bow ties as himself, something the Doctor would do that was not lost. He continued to Ross. "Until today every time I've been here, you have been knocking holes in my story, Aliens, time travel, life force, what were you going to try this time?"

Ross consulted his lap top, "Well to be honest I was getting a little low on fresh ammunition but you did say that you were in a dinner in America in 1965, with Tainted Love playing on the radio."

"A song! And you were going to point out that Tainted Love was released in 1981?"

"Yes, so you couldn't have heard it in 1965."

"Except that the Soft Cell version of Tainted Love was a cover and the remarkably similar sounding but better sung original was released in 1965 by Gloria Jones in America, although it didn't do very well."

"So it could have been heard in 1965?"

"If one happened to be there, which I suppose I probably wasn't, yes"

"Which year were you born Tim?"

"1981, so definitely not then. Tell me the meditation trick why couldn't we try that earlier?"

"It only works when you subconscious is working for you. If you had tried it earlier then what would have drifted into your conscious mind would have been more delusions."

"And now we have reached this little understanding?"

"It's time to go home again. As long as this time you continue to take the medication, you will have to be on the tablets now and it will be down to you to stay the course and continue to gain insight into what has happened to you."

"For how long?"

"Until your memories have fully unscrambled themselves, we can reduce the dose over time and discontinue it when the job is done. Many people have an episode like this in their lives and never have a relapse, although under extreme stress that risk can remain, but with luck it shouldn't happen. If I were you though I would stay out of that shop though."

"I think you're right, I wont be going back there in a hurry." Said Tim, thinking, 'Rule One, the Doctor lies.'

He made his own way home this time, it felt good to be back and for it to be familiar, odd to remember exploring the place as if it were unknown territory only a week or so ago. Resuming life as Tim would be a relaxing idyl after the chaos of recent events and it was great to be in a building alone, away from the noisy hospital. Even having the side room to himself hadn't felt private enough, when a member of staff could come in at any time, and there had been of constant noise of other patients freaking out and generally being far too loud.

Upstairs he found the bow ties he had recalled in the day before, it was comforting to see them just as he had remembered them. In the wardrobe were more tweed jackets, shirts and trousers, in a trunk on top he found other clothes, a green velvet smoking jacket, a pullover decorated with question marks and Edwardian cricket gear, amongst items. Well, Al had said he'd always had an excellent sartorial sense, not in as many words, but that must have been what he had meant.

Downstairs he pressed the big switch that turned all his computers on, the console lept into life and lights started rising and falling on the tower of cables that led up to the ceiling. Next to one of the keyboards still lay the Chinese medicine leaflets, one of which had a smiling baby of the front, 'We have helped desperate couples have children'. He knew that nothing sold in the shop had ever been shown to help with conception, and he could imagine how genuinely desperate people would part with their money having such promises dangled in front of them. He was pretty sure the stuff he had learned about bear bile at Skeptics In The Pub had been new, but this exploitation of the vulnerable for profit annoyed him anyway and must have done before he'd lost his memory. He had promised to stay away from the shop, which seemed like good advise, his last visit had not gone well for him. To seek to get revenge on the people in the shop for attacking him seemed counter productive, a step backwards, to move onward he shouldn't obsess about what had happened to him in the past. Yet, he felt he must do something. He also wondered about that back room he's only had a glimpse into. If he could prove to himself there was no sign of a catalytic extraction chamber and he'd imagined it, or better still something that could be honestly mistaken for one, that would help prove he had been wrong about the whole aliens thing and aid his recovery. He wondered what the best thing to do was, what would the Doctor, who was still him at the end of the day, do. The Doctor wouldn't just storm in, at least not without a backup plan, maybe six or seven backup plans.

There were several icons for games on the screen in front of him, he tried one, Fallout 3. After a pause a picture of a cartoon boy riding a goat appeared and then a close-up of an old fashioned radio valve. The valve sparked into life and he heard the Inkspots singing, 'I don't want to set the world on fire, I just want to start a flame in your heart.' The camera pulled back out of the radio which was in the dashboard of a wrecked bus. Pulling back further revealed the back of the bus was missing and the surrounding landscape a post apocalyptic cityscape of wrecked sky scrappers, and burnt out vehicles, a menacing armoured figure turned it's head and stared at him out of the screen. It was powerful stuff, and in his fantasy, as he now thought of it, he had imagined it had been real, and he had actually been there, how many hours of playing the game had brought about that delusion he wondered.


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

One evening later in the week, back in the Village Pump, he wondered how last time he had been here he hadn't really recognised these guys, it was odd and embarrassing, he tried to apologise but it had been brushed off with a joke and an assurance he hadn't been well. Still he could also remember Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart, and if his imagination had created such a sterling character from a composite of these three then they were probably alright.

They were playing bridge again but during a break in proceedings to refuel at the bar, Al took him to one side. "I heard about you and that shop on the High Street, what was going on?"

"All I know is I just walked in there and they attacked me, the police were called and I ended up back in hospital."

"We can't just wade in and go fighting people you know, that stuff the other night was quite disgusting but having fights is going to give the skeptical movement a bad name."

"I didn't have a fight they jumped me as soon I said 'Hello.'"

"Had you been in the shop before?"

"You're not the first person to ask me that and I honestly still can not remember, I may have been though, I found some of their leaflets on the console at home."

"The console?"

"Sorry not, the console, next to the computer."

"Best if you don't go back there then."

"You don't say, but there was something strange about the place."

"What?"

"I don't know ,it's a little hard to tell with two guys attacking you. Still you could do me a favour."

"The sort of favour I'm likely to regret agreeing to?"

"Shouldn't think so, just pop in there and take a few subtle photo's on your phone."

"Isn't that like feeding your obsessions, shouldn't you just forget about the shop and move on?"

"No, it's not feeding them, it's putting them to rest, and try to get a picture of their back room it's behind a little curtain. It'll stop me being tempted to go back there."

"Putting them to rest?"

"Yep, put to rest, buried six feet under, gone and forgotten, never to be thought of again."

"Really, I'll do this and you promise never to enter that shop again?"

"Promise. It'll be fine, they must have legit customers in there sometimes, and even if they have got a problem with me, they don't know you're anything to do with me."

"O.K. then, but only because I've always fancied being a secret agent and only if you swear never to go near the place again yourself."

"Promise." Rule one? No, he meant it, he would find a way to box clever on this one.

Tim's memory was mostly back now, or so he assumed, it was hard to know what he hadn't remembered. The meditation was helping and the drugs? Well he still found them an annoying crutch, but he wasn't going to risk a relapse into not knowing who he was, he'd rather be Tim than Doctor who? He did know that, unless he found a gap, he couldn't know what he had not remembered, things that had not come back to him may not reveal their absence. He remembered his parents, although they had died when he was quite young, he recalled his school days, living in London, selling the house in Gallifrey and buying this place here. He remembered setting up and running his antiques business, but he could not recall everything.

He didn't know what had originally happened at Herbal Nature, a definite gap and one that may have been close to his problems starting. Maybe the longer ago something happened the easier it was to get the memory back. He thought he had seen the help with conception poster before, but it was hard to tell as it had made such a strong impression on him recently, and he didn't recall getting the leaflets he found on his keyboard.

A couple of days later Al came round with the pictures. His phone was quite an old one and needed a blue-tooth connection to upload the photo's, luckily Tim's complex computer system could connect to just about anything. Al shrugged with embarrassment as they scrolled through the images, most of them were of the floor, or of the bottom of shelves laden with dried herbs in plastic jars. One showed what must be the lower half of the female shop assistant.

"I was trying to be surreptitious, and undercover." He explained.

There were no pictures of the back room directly, "I wasn't just going to go in there." He said.

But some had caught the curtain, that shielded the area Tim was interested in, and there was one in which a which a little of the room beyond could be seen around the edge. In spite of the age of the phone the pictures were of a reasonably high definition and Tim zoomed in on the slim area between curtain and door frame and lightened the result to bring out more detail. Though the gap a little of the back room could be discerned, and there was a large bronze coloured case of shelves, large enough for a person to stand up in, but it didn't look as if it could suck out anyone's life force, whatever that might be.

On the shelves of this case were a number of jars and bottles, that looked different from those on display in the front of the shop. He magnified the labels until they started to grow blurred and looked at the result, the Chinese characters revealed didn't mean anything to either of them but a little searching after uploading the picture to Google images revealed the what the jars or some of the jars were.

"So they're selling bear bile." He said to Al, somewhat triumphantly.

"They must keep it out the back, only available for special customers, or something underhand like that." Al replied

"At least they know they have something to hide. Which may explain why they so are jumpy."

"By jumpy, you mean violent."

"Precisely, but that means we have them. We can report them to trading standards and get them stopped."

"Well good luck with that, it may not work."

"Why not?"

"It's Home Office policy not to pursue complaints against Chinese medicine shops, they issue guidance but refuse to enforce it."

"Why ever not?"

"Something to do with community cohesion I expect. It's good evidence we have here, but I'm not sure what we can do with it."

"I'll think of something."

"Not something 'direct', I hope." said Al in a warning tone, as if he expected his friend to do something quite inappropriate, without warning. Perhaps not unreasonably Tim reflected.

"No, not something 'direct', Time Lord's honour, let's go to the pub, we can celebrate getting this far."

The next day Tim was busy. He set up a new website, quickly but the result was quite professional looking, and then he started combing through the archives on the Wimbledon Argus website, his local paper. Finally he created some headed paper also on the computer, and sat down and wrote a letter.

Dear Tenant,

We are pleased to inform you that a grant of up to twenty thousand pounds may be available, to you, for the premises, Herbal World, of which you are currently the lessee. At the British Ley lines Foundation, a part a the Department Of The Environment, it is our job to ensure the maintenance and efficiency of our national heritage of ley lines. During these difficult times it is vital for the Nations health that energy flows along these ancient networks are allowed to course unimpeded to let our country enjoy the health and prosperity that has traditionally been it's lot.

As your premises are situated along the Glastonbury-Londinium line, one of our most important routes we are able to offer generous grants to allow you to make any small cosmetic changes that may be necessary to ensure to flow of natural energies. If you are willing to assist with our program, one of national importance, please reply by email to the address above, and one of our representatives will call.

If you have queries please do not hesitate to contact us. Further information about the vital role ley lines have played in our Nation's health since neolithic times can be found on our website.

Yours faithfully,

Sarah Jane Smith

British Ley Lines Foundation.

He caught the Tube to Westminster to post the letter, to make sure it had an appropriate postmark. He hoped the website he had created would be convincing enough, he had failed to mention that the whole concept of ley lines was dreamt up Alfred Watkins in 1921 and immediately met with scepticism from professional archeologists. It was forgotten about, until in 1969 it was revived by John Mitchell a UFO enthusiast with an interest in feng shui. Instead his site just described ancient track ways, stone age paths of spiritual energy connecting monuments and areas of outstanding natural beauty. Unusually for someone creating a website, he hoped it would not have any visitors beyond those he intended for it, and he would take it down soon enough. Adding to the total of woo in the world was easy, but it felt like dabbling in the dark side.


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8

The next weekend Tim went away to Edinburgh with friends from his local branch of The Campaign For Real Ale. He was ostensibly on a drinking tour of pubs and breweries, but he would slip away at times to eye up the local antiques markets. He was adamant that he would not think about any of this Chinese medicine business whilst he was away. The rather old phone he took with him on these occasions had no internet function, he found this was the best way to make sure he actually read some books now and again, and so he could not check up constantly, to see if there was any reply to his letter.

The first day he stuck to his plan. The train journey up to Scotland was remarkably quick leaving plenty of time to hit the town and consume innumerable pints of heavy, and assorted other beers. Edinburgh pubs tended to be small, used to tourists and have a good range of beers, most of which were unavailable in London. They got back late to the their hotel, and breakfast was also as late as the establishment's timetable would allow. He skipped the morning's brewery tour to look for antiques. The search didn't go as well as it could have done, maybe he was losing his touch after the recent strange events in his life. So he was glad to meet up with the others again at lunch time and another days intensive drinking commenced. The previous night he had slept like a log despite being away from home, but that night he was not so lucky. He had to get up when he awoke with his bladder feeling like an overinflated balloon, and then he could not get back to sleep. The hotel was in a very old building and the room had a timeless quality about it, it lacked modern fittings and the nondescript furniture was old but serviceable except maybe for the mattress, which had seen better days, or even better centuries, at least it felt as if it had. He began to wonder what it would be like to pop back through time in the TARDIS and stroll around the city of Burke and Hare, He didn't get back to sleep until it began to get light, the time when many an insomniacs brain allows them to drift off into sleep, as if playing a cruel trick of this is what you wanted, well it's too late to have it now.

When he awoke again his heart was racing and the duvet was wrapped around him soaked with sweat. He'd been having a dream, a particularly vivid dream, or rather a flashback, to being attacked by the two men from the Herbal Nature shop. What a nasty trick for his mind to play on him on a weekend away! Lying there in bed hundreds of miles away he could see their faces as they knocked him to the ground outside the shop, he'd banged his head and tried to get up, but couldn't remember anymore. He went over it again, he'd been lying on the pavement outside the shop at night, or in the dark certainly. Maybe it was because it had been a dream but that wasn't how it had happened. Or maybe it was an earlier flashback. He sat up in bed his head hurt not from hitting the pavement but with the dull throb of a hangover. He tried to practice the meditation recall technique, not easy with an alcohol soaked brain, but he did gradually piece some new memories together.

He had seen the baby poster before. It's misleading and exploitative advise had annoyed him just as much the first time around and so he had printed off some guidance for couples from the British Fertility Society and taken it to the shop. At first he had received enthusiastic answers when he had asked what it was they could do for couples trying to have a baby, he must be about the right age to be making such enquiries. The young lady had told him of the great results they had achieved with herbal preparations and acupuncture. When he had asked how these methods worked, her manner had changed she had said that they had lots of experience and their results spoke for themselves. He then produced his print out and asked if she would read it if he left it with her. She took it into the back and the old man had come out and in imperfect English asked him too leave. He got the impression they were not going to read the guidance, tear it into little pieces and jump on them seemed more likely. Feeling rather despondent he made his way home.

The same evening he was walking back from the pub, it was late as closing time had now been pushed back to gone midnight, the high street was deserted. As he walked past Herbal Nature he saw the poster again with the smiling baby, an odd image to find annoying, but it annoy him it did. He knew his efforts earlier in the day had been as futile as offering resistance to the Borg, but he couldn't get the image out of his head of a desperate couple willing to part with their money and try anything. Offering false hope and theft it was a despicable combination, just lies to exploit the venerable and unwary. His mind continued to run along these lines with an ever increasing spiral of alcohol fueled indignation.

In the pocket of his tweed jacket was a small can of lacquer that he had been using on some of his stock before he had gone out that night, it wasn't paint and it would wash off easily but using it would make him feel better. He sprayed the word, LIES!, over the offending poster in dripping letters resembling the blood soaked credits of a horror film, and then took a step back to admire his work. At some point he must have heard a sound behind him, because he became aware, in a rather drunken way he was no longer alone on the high street. Suddenly he was transported back to being about five years old, he had been naughty and had been caught red handed. He turned round a small guilty smile on his face, ready to say. "It'll easily wash off, Officer." When he was confronted by the two younger men from the shop, not that he knew that then or had ever seen them before, but it was an easy guess to make with hindsight.

"What, you think, you doing?" One of them yelled at him. He was at a loss for words feeling rather stupid standing there with the spray can in his hand. Before he could think of anything to say, the question was emphasised with an "Aye!" and he felt himself being pushed from one assailant to the other.

He'd had several pints and lost his footing falling awkwardly, the can flew out of his hand and rattled off down the street and he banged his head against the shop window as he fell, the glass was unharmed but very hard. A little surprised by the effect of what had been only a small shove, one of the men kicked him in the leg then they ran away. Tim couldn't remember anything else and assumed he had passed out at that point from the bang to his head.

Although he still felt outraged by the exploitation of vulnerable childless couples, he was embarrassed by remembering his childish vandalism, hardly the sophisticated reason based approach to problem solving he prided himself on, but it seemed it was the Herbal Nature people that were responsible for his first visit to hospital. That made sense to him after the reception he had had last time he visited them. The policeman thought he had been mugged but he often went out without a wallet or phone, he liked to travel without fear of losing anything, he generally just stuffed some money into a pocket together with his front door key and off he went. By modern standards he looked like a victim of a robbery by not have phone with a built in camera, an mp3 player or a pad on him at all times. That night he had picked up some money from the side as he left but had got some wartime coins from his stock mixed in with it by accident, the contemporary legal tender had been spent at the pub, leaving only the shillings and pence.

He had recalled a lot in one night and filled in the missing pieces to his puzzle but, one last day touring pubs, discussing the Scottish beers quickly put the whole business out of his mind, into the long grass, where it belonged. He just let himself retain a small hope that his plan, he had begun to put into action before he left, would work.

A fortnight later he was in the pub with Al when the subject of the shop came up again.

"You didn't try anything else did you?" His friend asked in a worried tone.

"Well, I did try something."

"Oh dear, dare I ask what?"

Tim showed him a copy of the letter he had sent.

It raised a smile, "O.K., so did you get a reply."

Reaching into his pocket again Tim produced a printout of an email.

Dear Ms Smith,

We at Herbal Nature were very interested to receive your letter concerning ley lines.

Of course we will do what we can to help, as this is of importance to the country, your inspector can call at any time during normal business hours.

Could you let us know how much the grant will be?

Regards

Yim Wong.

Herbal Nature.

"So it worked, they bit." Al exclaimed.

"It started to work, I followed up with this."

Dear Miss Wong,

We were very pleased to receive your positive response regarding our ley line regeneration project. In answer to your question grants of up to twenty thousand pounds are available and awards are often made at the upper end of this range. An exact amount can only be determined after a visit by one of our inspectors and the fulfillment of a few basic easy to follow conditions.

Unfortunately when our inspector recently called he was running late and arrived after your premises were closed. He was able to make a preliminary report however to start the ball rolling in the grant payment process. His report made from outside your premises suggests many important points necessary for the flow of the ley line energy are already complied with. There was one concern however to do with the obstruction of the front window, he noted a number of posters displayed on it, these may impede the energy flow and we would ask that you remove them before a more thorough inspection can take place. It would also be helpful if your take down any north facing mirrors you may have in the shop.

We look forward to a close and productive relationship with yourselves.

Kind regards

Sarah Jane Smith.

British Ley Line Foundation.

"What's the problem with north facing mirrors?"

"I don't know." Tim replied. "I made it up to sound feng shui'ee, but they have taken the posters down."

"Really?"

"Really."

"Including the baby one you dislike so much."

"Definitely including that one."

"Well, well done mate. A victory. A peace-full victory. One, nil, to us, then."

"Yes, one, nil, but there's more."

"Am I going to like the more? You had my full approval for the poster removal trick."

"After a few days I received an enquiry asking when the inspector would call, and when the money would be forthcoming."

"Well they weren't going to forget twenty grand I suppose."

"So I sent them this."

Dear Miss Wong,

I am pleased to be able to tell you that we are close to being able to release to yourselves a grant of eighteen thousand pounds, in recognition of your efforts in harmonising your premises with our ancient ley line energy.

It only remains to fully utilise the potential of our spiritual heritage by channeling the natural energy of the ley line at it's greatest extent. To this end we must ask you to display within your shop and to the outside world, a talisman of one of the ancestral animal spirits of this land. Our astrologers tell us that a bear would be most suitable in your particular case. Please arrange for

an image or representation of a brown bear to appear in your window and we may make the grant payment to you. The bear need not be too scary, realistic or life size but must resemble a brown bear as used to, but sadly is no longer to be, found in Britain.

Once again, we look forward to a close and productive relationship with yourselves.

Kind regards

Sarah Jane Smith.

British Ley Line Foundation.

"Why did you ask them to put a bear in their window, aren't you just getting them to jump through hoops for fun."

"It was fun, but I had my reasons. There's a reporter on our local paper called Lynne Coombes, have you heard of her?"

"Should I have? I only read it when I'm looking for a job or selling a bicycle."

"She covers a lot of local issues, but her own special interest is animal welfare. She writes a lot about mistreated pets, donkey sanctuaries, and horror of vivisection type stories."

"So you told her about the bear bile."

"I emailed her links to Rebecca Shepard's website and told her about Herbal Nature, I attached a copy of the photo you took and pointed out they even had a toy bear in the window."

"Did they?"

"Yes, quite a cute little one."

"And what happened?"

Tim reached over to the bar and picked up a copy of the paper. "There on page 8."

The articles started with the same story they had heard at Skeptics In The Pub, not surprisingly as most of it must have been sourced from Rebecca Shepherd's website, although there was some new material so Lynne had been doing her homework. Underneath the pictures of bears in cages similar to ones they had already seen were two more, one was the close up they had done from Al's phone picture and one was of the exterior of Herbal Nature with a large children's toy brown bear in the window. 'Even though the trade in endangered species and bear bile is illegal in the United Kingdom and across Europe it still goes on in everyday shops on our high streets. Here in Wimbledon an undercover team recently revealed evidence of an illegal trade in bear bile products in this shop, 'Herbal Nature'. This shop knowing no shame even displays a lovable toy bear in the window, presumably so that those in the know, can ask for their illegal purchases.'

"I'm a photo journalist!" Al declared.

"We're a photo journalist, I did the enlargement and enhancement."

"I went on the under cover mission."

"You did, and I'm very grateful."

"So what happens now?"

"We will have to wait then, let us see what magic I have worked."

The following Saturday Tim walked along the high street to do his shopping, but Herbal Nature was as always on his route. He passed it on the other side of the road as was his habit nowadays. The bear in the window was gone, although the posters had yet to make a return. On the pavement outside the shop was a trestle table with a couple of rather scruffy looking young women sitting behind it, pinned to the table were garish posters of dogs and cats being experimented on and bears in cages being farmed for their bile. The women were soliciting donations for their animal welfare charity from passers by and telling anyone that stopped of the horrors of bear farming. Word it seemed was spreading and he didn't suppose there would be much bear bile or very much else sold from the shop that day and hopefully not on many other days either. "And they'd have gotten away with it." Tim thought to himself, "If it wasn't for us darned kids."

Later relaxing back home again, Tim looked round, the room, his antiques and computer room, no longer looked like an imitation TARDIS interior. The TARDIS seemed like a poor fictional version of this joyous expression of his personality. In here surrounded by his prized possessions and stock, some of which were one and the same, he was almost a creature out of time. There were items around him that were hundreds, and in a couple of cases over a thousand years old, and he could touch them, get to know them, and research their histories, but in the center of it all was a homemade heart of the latest and best that home computing could provide. Computers that were linked to the telescope on the roof that could track objects far away in space whose light had taken millions of years to reach Earth. He could remember his early childhood in, not on, Gallifrey, the bleak landscape, the hermit halfway up the mountain behind his home.

He enjoyed living here being Tim, he enjoyed living alone but there was something missing. Something for want of a better word he could call companionship, he went back to his address book, he passed Amy's page, he'd freaked her out the last time they had met, and he was frankly embarrassed. He stopped at the R's, there it was, another name, not crossed out. He dialed the number next to River Song, "River, it's the Doctor", Tim ventured when a woman answered. The voiced at the other end brightened, "Hello Sweetie", she replied.


End file.
